It’s time to move away from manual processes in QuickBooks.
If your organization uses QuickBooks, you’re likely aware that your finance team spends a lot of time and effort on manual processes. Known for its ease of use, the popular software provides the basic functionality that small businesses and nonprofits need to manage their financial operations.
As organizations grow, however, QuickBooks lacks the robust functionality that they need. Let’s take a closer look at the impact of manual processes on finance teams and the advantages of switching to an automated, cloud-based financial software solution.
Let’s look at moving from manual processes in QuickBooks to automated tasks in Sage Intacct.
Manual vs. Automated Processes
Organizations that use QuickBooks often experience recurring pain points in these three key areas:
Accounts Payable
In QuickBooks, invoice capture relies on a series of time-consuming, error-prone manual processes from the time the invoice arrives until it is archived, including manual routing for verification and payment. QuickBooks enables finance teams to view invoices, sales orders, and other records, but it doesn’t link that information to other business applications.
In contrast, a cloud-based financial software solution automates data capture, compares each invoice to other information in the accounting system, sends each invoice to the appropriate approver, and pays and archives the invoice. An automated system also generates an alert if it detects a discrepancy, such as a quantity or price mismatch, enabling errors to be rectified quickly.
As a result, invoice approval is faster, fewer errors occur, and productivity increases. The average total cost of processing a single invoice drops from $15 to $2 when an organization adopts an automated financial solution. An automated system also provides an integrated, real-time financial view of a company’s end-to-end processes.
Closes
With QuickBooks, closes can take a long time because they require team members to investigate anomalies and exceptions, reconcile bank statements, and consolidate multiple entities manually. Other common time-consuming manual tasks during closing include currency conversions, allocations and accruals for expenses, depreciations, and amortizations.
Cloud-based financial solutions automate these tasks while enabling finance teams to see what’s happening in all areas of the business. In addition to providing a holistic view of financial metrics and everything from bookings to inventory, these modern solutions allow team members to share real-time financial data with business leaders to help them make strategic, data-driven decisions.
Audits
For businesses with multiple entities, QuickBooks does not provide a single chart of accounts to facilitate audits, requiring finance teams to find supporting documents manually when assembling information for auditors. An automated system provides immediate access to needed audit materials.
Signs That It May Be Time to Make a Change to Sage Intacct
Although QuickBooks provides value, many growing organizations discover that the software has critical limitations. As a result, finance teams often make compromises that lower productivity and develop inefficient workarounds and home-grown applications.
If your finance team carries any of these burdens, it may be time to consider upgrading to a modern financial software solution:
- You do not have a single view of shared accounts, customers, and vendors across entities.
- Users jump from one instance of QuickBooks to another.
- You’re finding more errors or errors go undiscovered for long periods.
- Team members track intercompany eliminations, revenue recognitions, and other areas.
- Your team processes more than 200 invoices per month or spends too much time on reconciliation checks.
- Your chart of accounts is growing and workloads are piling up, forcing your finance team to work overtime
- Managers want more visibility into team workflows.
- Leaders lack up-to-date financial information to make informed decisions.
The Benefits of an Automated System
A robust, cloud-based financial solution can automate up to 90% of an organization’s AP and AR processes, lowering costs and saving labor by eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual processes. They also automate timesheets, expense claims, and other processes.
Even better, automated systems integrate with other business applications, enabling finance teams to share critical, up-to-date information so organizations can better manage their supply chain and transactions with vendors and customers. They improve efficiency, enhance accuracy, lower costs, and prevent revenue leakage by providing an accurate picture of your cash situation. Finance teams can use the time saved to help your business achieve its larger goals and plan for the future.
Shifting From Automatic to Manual
For additional insights into how manual processes impede financial management and how modern cloud-based financial software can automate these processes, download “Shifting from Manual to Automatic: Signs That QuickBooks Is Slowing Down Your Business.” This brief e-book paper examines the reasons why your organization may want to move away from QuickBooks and how Sage Intacct can help you improve your financial operations.